Thursday, April 7, 2016

Russia’s Inability to Deal with Its Past Imperils Its Future, Inozemtsev Says

Paul
Goble

Staunton, April 7 – Russians love to
compare themselves and their country with others and especially with the United
States and to ask why others have done better than they have, Vladislav
Inozemtsev says; but in general, Russians focus on differences in economic,
legal or belief systems rather than on the critical problem of national memory.

In yesterday’s “Gazeta,” the Moscow
economist and commentator argues that the differences between how Russians deal
with their past and how Americans deal with theirs are critical for an
understanding now only of how the two countries have developed but also of how
they will evolve in the future (gazeta.ru/column/vladislav_inozemcev/8161691.shtml).

Americans view their history
differently than Russians do. There are many pages from the American past that
Americans are not especially proud of, but they do not try to obliterate them
from their national narrative but rather to incorporate them as part of a
common story of how these evils were overcome.

An example of this, Inozemtsev says,
is the fact that on the Washington Mall, there is a Museum of the History of
American Indians.That may not seem so
unusual, but “try to imagine a museum in Moscow in which would be assembled
reports about Russian wars in the North Caucasus in the 19th century
or the deportation of Chechens or Crimean Tatars in 1944.”

Also on the Washington Mall is a
monument to Martin Luther King who “using contemporary language was the main
human rights defender in US history.”Try again to imagine “a monument to Andrey Sakharov on the place let us
say of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior” in Moscow.

That list can be extended to include
memorials to wars that Americans remain proud of and wars where their losses
were such that they have very different feelings. Russians should try to
imagine the erection of a memorial complex in their capital devoted to “Soviet
soldiers who fought even in Afghanistan.”

But of course, the Moscow
commentator continues, the issue is “not only about monuments but about memory
as a phenomenon. In Russia, in recent times, people have talked a lot about
respect for the thousand-year history of our country, but a mass of questions
has arisen about whether it is worthy of that.”

“In America,” Inozemtsev points out,
“people talk less about history than they do in Russia, but they protect and
preserve it much more carefully because Americans don’t confuse history and
ideology.” That allows them to integrate various aspects of their history to
form a common narrative rather than splitting them apart as happens in Russia.

In Russia, he notes, history has always
been at the service of ideology, “and today when the latter de facto doesn’t exist … patriotism is
declared the national idea – a stranger combination it would be difficult to
come up with … and therefore it become brutal and faceless.”

“Of course, it would be absurd to
assert that history is not used in America for promoting the unity of the nation
and support in the population of feelings of membership in a unique, powerful
and great country.” But there is one important distinction: in American
history, there are few purely “’negative’” personalities that divide the
population into opposing camps.

Many American presidents have left
office deeply unpopular, but Americans at all levels do not exclude them from
the national narrative. And that has an important consequence: “when historical
personalities do not consider their chief task to be the settling of accounts
with their predecessors or opponents, they do not have to rewrite history.”

The contrast with Russia is
strikingly obvious.Each new leader
feels compelled to blacken his predecessors or even write them out of the
historical narrative of Russia altogether, an approach which not only fragments
the nation but changes the way each generation of leaders views the future, one
in which its members fear the same thing will happen to them.

Some Russians recognize these
dangers, but their efforts to combat the approach of those in power have been
marginalized.And they have seldom been
able to do much to overcome the “black and white” approach to Russian history
of the new “’common course’” that each new Russian leader wants.

Thus, Inozemtsev says, “Russia is
not America” because it cannot find in itself the potential for public concord
and the agreement of various parts of society to deal with each other and with
the past on the basis of respect even if not of total agreement. And because
they can’t, their leaders behave as they do.

Each generation of Russian leaders
fears that just as it has destroyed the reputation of its predecessors, its own
reputation “and at times its freedom or even life” will be destroyed in the future.That leads to putting money in offshore
accounts and ignoring the needs of the population both now and in the longer
term.

Given Russian attitudes toward
history, what these leaders are doing is “perfectly rational because they do
not consider this country their own.” Instead, they recognize as have their
predecessors that they are in large part “accidental” leaders. Consequently,
Inozemtsev says, he has no interest in condemning them for this as such.

But at the same time, he points out,
such people should not talk about Russia “catching up” with or surpassing
America because until Russian attitudes toward the past change, Russian
possibilities for the future won’t.